In recent years, there is an increasing prevalence of a 3D display device such as a 3D television that allows a stereoscopic view of a displayed image, and a technique is demanded by which image groups (stereoscopic images) corresponding to the left and right eyes can be easily generated. For this purpose, an apparatus that generates by simulation a pseudo image of an image that is obtained when an object is imaged from a predetermined perspective has been started to be used for, for example, generation of a stereoscopic image for various types of displays.
Meanwhile, when an observer observes a stereoscopic image, each part of the entire image is stereoscopically displayed in accordance with a distance of each part of the object corresponding to the part of the entire image. This causes a problem that the eyes of the observer fatigue due to overabundance and mixing of information concerning a stereoscopic view.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-087807 proposes a technique of generating a stereoscopic image of an object including a background and a foreground, by generating pseudo images of the object each corresponding to each of the right and left eyes such that the background can be observed further than it actually is. In more detail, in the stereoscopic image generated by the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-087807, the positional relationship among parts of a background image corresponding to an original distance is maintained, and in this condition, a display position of the background in the right-eye pseudo image is shifted to the right from its original display position and thus located almost at the center of the image while a display position of the background in the left-eye pseudo image is shifted to the left from its original display position and thus located almost at the center of the image. In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-087807, the background is shifted, and thereby the display positions of the background in the left-eye pseudo image and the right-eye pseudo image are made almost identical, thus reducing the fatigue of the eyes of the observer.